Primer: English Premier League (Self-Serving Intro)

[This is Part 1 in a 3?-part series]

Nobody's asked for it but I've been promising it, so here it is, sportsfans, just in time for the start of the season this weekend. Before I dive into a detailed explanation of the ins and outs, the whos and wheres and whys, I've got to address why you'd even want to care. As with most everything I discuss on this blog, you should care because I do.

Also, of course, because following the Premier League is, ultimately, more rewarding than following baseball, basketball, or (gridiron) football--professional or collegiate. You heard that right. I grew up worshiping the big three sports--and I still follow my teams in each of them--but I really don't care about the other teams, players, coaches or stories that make up the drama of a season.

I'd wager it's a combination of fatigue, a desire for something novel and new, increasingly crappy television coverage, and the superiority of soccer generally and the Premier League specifically. (NOTE: I'll be using soccer and football interchangeably. For the record, the origin of the term soccer is English and dates back to the very origin of the sport, so when Brits or Euros make fun of our use of the term as somehow provincial, they can fuck right off. I know the day will come when I'll have one too many in a pub, make this point, follow it up with "You can fuck right off" and get my ass kicked. It would be worth it.)

I'll admit right up front I'm a pretty big Anglophile. I'm well aware that had a lot to do with how quickly I took to their league. But it really has nothing to do with how quickly I took to the sport. Sure, I, like millions of American boys and girls, played organized soccer growing up--before moving on to focus on one sport, or other more mainstream sports like rockclimbing and throwing the hammer or javelin. So for many years I never gave the thought much sport.

But soccer began creeping into my consciousness in 1994 as the World Cup came to America and FIFA Soccer came to the Sega Genesis. Lots of videogame sparring plus attending games--U.S. v. Brazil on July 4 at Stanford and Costa Rica v. Romania (or was it the U.S.?) at the Coliseum in Los Angeles. Fun to watch, fun to play in a videogame, and after witnessing the Brazilian fans mobbing the intersections, banging drums and climbing up on streetlights after beating the U.S., fun to experience.

Can't say I paid too much attention to the World Cup in 1998--at that point really the only opportunity for an American to watch world-class football. I had continued to sporadically play soccer videogames, and Fox Sports had begun showing some English club games (NOTE: the World Cup involves national teams, like in the Olympics; countries also have professional leagues, wherein teams are referred to as clubs. Because it sounds more sophisticated than team, I don't know.) Anyway, I don't really know why I paid so little attention then.

But come 2002, I watched a whole lot of World Cup. And I began following the English League when the season began later that year. A year later, on my honeymoon in Thailand, I stayed up until 3am one night to catch an English League game involving Arsenal, the team I had chosen to root for (or support, as they say over there. They have supporters, not fans--but make no mistake, they're every bit as fanatical).

Not long after that I and a partner in crime who was there at the beginning in 1994 and had begun to follow soccer as well, got the crazy notion to start a recreational team. Had he and I played soccer since we were boys? No. Well, actually I had played goalkeeper in intramurals in college, but since our team largely consisted of guys who had played high-level soccer through high school, I didn't have to do much. Did the fact that we didn't play soccer, or know a bunch of soccer players stop us. Fuck no!

Somehow we managed to round up about 20 men: some who had played soccer through high school, some who were great athletes who picked it up quickly, and some who had played in college. Friends-of-friends, co-workers, distant relatives, a dude who rode by on a bike and asked if we needed more players--we were a rag-tag bunch. We started during the summer in the San Fernando Valley when temperatures hovered around 100 degrees. Early on we had a hard time fielding enough guys to have substitutes--I recall guys puking from over-exertion (but not me, I was playing goalie again. I had planned to get in shape and play out in the field, but our goalie pulled out at the last second. As I stare at my fat belly 5 years later I still rue that turn of events).

Over the course of a few seasons we clawed our way up and eventually went undefeated and won the championship in our division. A culmination of teamwork, persistence and hardwork (wrangling at least 11 guys out of 20 to show up every week was a tough goddamned grind).

While theses seasons passed, I was mainlining English soccer. Watching whatever games were on the Fox Soccer Channel. Waking up early to go to a pub to watch Arsenal when their games weren't televised. Picking up info and insight from the passionate knuclehead English ex-pats on FSC's Fox Football Friday. I was in deep.

And I'll be damned if that didn't payoff in actual physical ways. At the end of a game, with mere seconds to go, our team was down by one goal and we needed to draw to have a shot at the playoffs (NOTE: you get 3 points for a win and 1 for a draw. Traditionally in football there are no playoffs, but hey, this was a rec league in America.)

So I, as the keeper, run the length of the field to join the rest of my team in a corner kick which was likely to be the last play of the game. (NOTE: for a corner kick, play stops, a player places the ball at the corner of the field while everybody else gangs up in front of the goal awaiting the incoming kick). There I am, trying to sneak into the fray unnoticed--wearing bright yellow, all 6'1", 250lbs of me--and nobody on the other team really tries to defend me. Here comes the kick, curling in perfectly, heading directly for...me? no way? Yes. At this point, time slows for me. It's heading for my head? Yes. I'm really gonna have to head this? I haven't headed a ball since I was 11. It's getting closer. I better not fuck this up. BAM!

I strike it square, textbook perfect. Right past their keeper. Holy Shit! Pandemonium. Game over. The other team loses their shit, screaming at the ref, screaming at us. They think I punched it with my hand, such is their disbelief. Nope, no hand of god here. Of course, for the rest of the life of our team, if anybody wants to get my goat they straightfacedly claim--to new members I forced to listen to my tale--that I punched it in.

Never thought I'd top that--and for sheer drama, I didn't. But a year later, on a full-sized field in

Santa Monica, I did what I'd been claiming to do for a few seasons and I put on a regular jersey in the second half of a game in which we were blowing out our opponents. I figured I'd play in defense, run around a bit, have a little fun. Soon after I'm out there, our defense takes the ball away, passes it up to the midfield. I'm in the defense out on the left. I haul ass up the field and figure this is all the energy I've got so here goes nothing. We keep moving the ball up the field on the other side. The other team's defense disregards me--whether they were just tired or in disbelief at the freight train of crazy heading toward them I'll never know. Our midfielder with the ball sees me and sends a long, arcing pass my way across the field.

Again, this one's heading for my head, and time once again slows down. I consider heading it since that's my signature move, right? But I realize I'm a bit too far from goal to pull that off (I swear, I'm having these thoughts in splits of seconds). So I receive the ball with my chest, bouncing it up and forward. Perfectly. Enough time in the air to take my measure, see where the goalie is, and--before the ball bounces--connect perfectly and hammer it into the far side of the net. A meaningless goal, a meaningless game, but THAT is the greatest moment of my life. And I was capable of doing that solely because of how much fucking football I'd been watching (well, that and the fact I've got incredible hand-eye coordination and control of my body. But still!)

So what was my point? Soccer is awesome and so am I. Together soccer and I produced something greater than I thought possible. Who knows what you might accomplish if you read the rest of this primer and dive in head-first?

Part 2 to follow shortly.